4.2 Massacres And Matinees Paulson’s expressions and visual tics are really well thought-out. Bette and Dot are two different people who share the same body, and they may be twins, but they could not be more different psychologically. Dot is the more aggressive one, Bette the shy dreamer who wants to be a star. However, Bette’s shyness gets the better of her when the two are thrust into the spotlight by bossy new arrivals Dell the strongman (Michael Chiklis) and Desiree the hermaphrodite (Angela Bassett) who is married to Dell....

You would think at this point, American Horror Story couldn’t crank up the craziness to last season’s level, but this week’s episode from the mind of Jennifer Salt just might be the most insane 40-something minutes of television I’ve seen on any network not HBO. Even including HBO, this was sheer bananas, with every plot twist being topped by something else. It was like a game of anything you can do, I can do better, except scripted by maniacs....

The second episode leads with the two familiar twins, Daniel and Nathan, as we learn Nathan is in trouble with the police for defecating on a police car (that’s putting it really nicely), after being inspired by his favourite rapper S. Mouse’s new song, “Poo On You”. Avoiding any jail time, the family agree to social workers visiting the house to assess the situation with Nathan’s hearing and behavioural problems....

At the same time, though probably not in correlation with the improvements to advertising, the found footage sub-genre of horror has become more and more prevalent and, partly through its ubiquity, much less creative than the films that popularised the form. As the Hollywood model moves ever closer towards the two extremes of mega-budget tentpoles and micro-budget genre films, that opening weekend has become more crucial than ever. It could even be said that several recent horror movies have employed marketing techniques that have been more scary, memorable and interesting to talk about than the films they’re advertising....

1.23 Sacrifice We pick up right where last week left off, with a now shirtless (of course) Oliver being questioned by Malcolm. This is where the idea of sacrifice is first raised, with Malcolm asserting that the reason he can beat Oliver time and time again is that he knows what he’s willing to give up in the fight. Everyone in this episode sacrifices something for someone else, and every single character, with the exception of maybe Laurel, gets some sort of heroic moment....

1.8 The Furies A road trip to Helios sees Hercules, Jason and Pythagoras joined by Pythagoras’ (up until now unmentioned) brother and a gaggle of other characters who are pretty much… just there. Hercules has offered to take some gold to Helios, along with the groom of an arranged marriage, a silent manservant, a random woman and a guy who seems to know about traveling across the desert because he speaks all mysteriously about it....

It’s a fraking mess in this week’s episode as a full-scale mutiny takes a grip of the Galactica. The uprising is, of course, orchestrated by Gaeta and Zarek, the two partners in this revolution and we see the shocking lengths to which Zarek will go to achieve his political goals as he cold bloodedly murders a deckhand who stands in his way of leaving the ship. This brutal moment sets the tone for the insurrection to follow and will not be the last death before the episode is out....

Since it’s still so early in the series, it’s no surprise that this episode continued to build on the show’s mythology, still in the process of being established. This second episode did a pretty good job of combining that necessary exposition with various twists and turns of the plot, producing a fairly strong hour which grounds us much more firmly in the world of the Shieldlands. However, in the story of Beowulf, the fact that Grendel has a mother who cares for him and (spoiler alert) is desperate to avenge his death is a key plot point....

2.9 Nailed I’ve seen a few complaints online that Jimmy and Mike’s divergent plots have been hurting each other this season, specifically in how the stakes are almost always higher over on Mike’s side of the show. Superficially this is true; Mike deals in a world of violence where any wrong step could kill him, while the risks are a lot less to Jimmy. However high stakes don’t always have to be life and death....

Indeed, Black Panther was long expected to be a box office juggernaut, with official industry projections first estimating last month that the film would gross between $100 million and $125 million. (By Friday, analysts had moved the number closer to what I had been personally guessing for months: $175 million). The demand, and need, for a superhero and larger fantasy mythology that serviced more than a strictly white audience has been obviously there for decades, however it seems everyone had underestimated how large that desire was....

2.7 Peg Of Old Blood relations can be as dramatic or as mundane as any human connection, but they are invariably tinged with additional drama. In this episode of Boardwalk Empire, Peg Of Old, the power of familial relationships take the leading position in the action. In an episode brimming with family troubles, perhaps the most acute is that of new parents, Nelson and Lucy. Van Alden is still experiencing professional and financial difficulties and is unable to honour his agreement with Lucy....

4.9 Marriage and Hunting Rothstein’s been having a bad season. His luck at the tables has left him (and whatever he says, it is luck) and his few appearances have invariably shown him in a state of weakness. This week he appears, once again, in a few revealing glimpses, asking his valet why he doesn’t share his master’s taste for games and, perhaps cracking a little, telling him the story of his own youthful conversion to cards....

4.7. Problem Dog Any of the big shows you care to name – 24, Lost, Mad Men, The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, The Shield – feature protagonists who aren’t so much flawed as they are huge, walking, talking flaws with faces, that career around destroying lives and moulting their flaws all over the, er, floor. In this group of rough diamonds, however, Walter is managing to stand out. He may be the least likeable anti-hero of them all....

Walker plays Damien, a Detroit police detective who is one of the best undercover agents in the police force. When you need to take down a drug kingpin and have someone undercover for a year at a time, that’d be Damien. Being a police officer is the family business; Damien’s father was also a cop who was killed by the vicious drug kingpin and arms dealer Tremaine (RZA), the overlord of the titular Brick Mansions....

Since green boy Olly sent that first investigation-compromising Tweet, Broadchurch has narrowed its eyes at the press and waited for it to start claiming its own victims. Jack Marshall was the first of those, the discovery of his body the visual equivalent of an Aesop’s moral about looking before you leap to conclusions. The tale of Jack’s “secret family” unspooled steadily in the episode, each nugget – the marriage, the car accident, the dead son – moving him from suspect to sympathetic accused....

The last few weeks have been fun, haven’t they? We’ve enjoyed being armchair detectives, discussing evidence, swapping theories on Twitter, making topical jokes about suspecting Thatcher/Vince the Labrador/Justin Bieber of having killed Danny Latimer. We’ve played excitedly along with our enjoyable game of find-the-killer, like a pack of yelping dogs worrying a rabbit. Then came tonight’s finale, a chastening bucket of cold water thrown on our snapping muzzles. It’s not a game, writer Chris Chibnall reminded us....

This review contains spoilers. If last week’s sensitive opener was all about establishing empathy with Broadchurch’s traumatised subject, then this week’s was focused on getting the crime drama machinery up and running. Hardy and Miller collected evidence and interviewed leads in an instalment designed not to leave us shaken and raw, but with a list of suspects and a hunch. Right now, mine says that cocky Leo attacked Trish (a good-looking young man assaulting a fifty-year-old woman makes the clearest point that rape is about power and not sex) but then like Miller, I too am never in the mood for swaggery young shits....

This time, Lightning McQueen – voiced once again by Owen Wilson – is coming to the end of his career. He’s still racing, but when more experimental, cutting edge racers start overtaking – primarily Jackson Storm, the sort-of foe of the film – he’s left questioning whether his days are numbered. Or, more to the point, those around him are. A corporate takeover at his team owners, Rust-Eze, brings this into sharp focus, as the new team owner, a two-dimensional President Business by the name of Sterling (voiced by the mighty Nathan Fillion), decides that he wants McQueen off the track, and instead to use his name to sell tie-in products....

We start right where we left off with Caskett at the swings and a very tense moment as we await Kate’s answer to Castle asking her to marry him. All through the summer I never once thought about the way it played out in tonight’s premiere and it was perfect. Cut to two months later in Washington and Beckett is in the middle of federal agent training. After blowing an exercise, we meet her new boss (played by Lisa Edelstein of House), gives her usual solid performance and is a welcome addition to the cast....